Simple by Alan Siegel Conquering the Crisis of Complexity

For decades, Alan Siegel and Irene Etzkorn have championed simplicity as a competitive advantage and a consumer right. Consulting with businesses and organizations around the world to streamline products, services, processes and communications, they have achieved dramatic results.

In SIMPLE, the culmination of their work together, Siegel and Etzkorn show us how having empathy, striving for clarity, and distilling your message can reduce the distance between company and customer, hospital and patient, government and citizen-and increase your bottom line.

Examining the best and worst practices of an array of organizations big and small-including the IRS, Google, Philips, Trader Joe's, Chubb Insurance, and ING Direct, and many more-Siegel and Etzkorn recast simplicity as a mindset, a design aesthetic, and a writing technique.

In these illuminating pages you will discover, among other things:Why the Flip camera became roadkill in the wake of the iPhoneWhat SIMPLE idea allowed the Cleveland Clinic to improve care and increase revenueHow OXO designed a measuring cup that sold a million units in its first 18 months on the marketWhere Target got the idea for their "ClearRX" prescription systemHow New York City simplified its unwieldy bureaucracy with three simple numbers By exposing the overly complex things we encounter every day, SIMPLE reveals the reasons we allow confusion to persist, inspires us to seek clarity, and explores how social media is empowering consumers to demand simplicity.

Alan Siegel is the CEO of Siegelvision, a brand identity consultancy, and is the founder and Chairman Emeritus of global brand strategy firm Siegel+Gale. He is considered one of the country's leading authorities on business communications.Irene Etzkorn is a worldwide authority simplification. She has built Siegel+Gale's Simplification portfolio, and her clients include the nation's top banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies, utilities and health care providers.

Unrated Critic Reviews for Simple

Kirkus Reviews

Readers may have had vastly different experiences with some of his examples of simplicity, including, for example, the budgeting software Mint, hardly “simple” to begin with and praised for the fact that “users view their own data, but they can compare their financial habits with others in the sa...

Publishers Weekly

In this enjoyable paean to the virtues of simplicity, Siegel and Etzkorn offer their wisdom on simplifying the delivery of information. As they point out, âthe principles of simplicity apply to every

Publishers Weekly

The authors also sound a rallying cry to consumers to demand clear, concise information, and illustrate that while corporatespeak may be popular with lawyers, without plain, easy-to-understand offerings, corporations will have to battle for customer satisfaction.